high defert of his father, even this admiration contributes to his uneafinefs: Averfion to his uncle, arifing from the fame origin, has a fimilar tendency, and augments his anguish. All these feelings and emotions uniting together, are rendered ftill more violent, exafperated by his recent interview with the Queen, ftruggling for utterance, but restrained. Agitated and overwhelmed with afflicting images, no foothing, no exhilarating affection can have admiffion into his heart. His imagination is vifited by no vision of happiness; and he wishes for deliverance from his afflictions, by being delivered from a painful existence.

O, that this too too folid flesh would melt, Thaw, and refolve itself into a dew!

Or that the Everlasting had not fix'd

His canon 'gainft felf-flaughter. O God, O God!
How weary, ftale, flat, and unprofitable

Seem to me all the ufes of this world!

Fie on't! O fie! 'Tis an unweeded garden,

That grows to feed; things rank, and grofs in nature,

Poffefs it merely.

By

By giving vent to any paffion, its violence at the time increafes. Thofe, for inftance, who express their forrow by shedding tears, find themselves at the inftant of weeping more exceffively affected than perfons of a more referved and inflexible conftitution. Yet, by thus giving vent to their inquietude, they find relief, while those of a taciturn humour are the victims of painful and unabating anxiety: And, the reafon is, that the emotion, raised to its highest extreme, can no longer continue equally violent, and fo fubfides. In cafes of this nature, that is, when emotions, by being expreffed, become exces→ five, the mind paffes from general reflections to minute and particular circumftances: And imagination, the pliant flatterer of the paffion in power, renders thefe circumftances ftill more particular, and better adapted to promote its veheIn the foregoing lines the reflections are general; but, in these that fol

mence.

low,

low, they become particular; and the emotion waxing stronger, the imagination, by exhibiting fuitable images, and by fitting to its purpose even the time between the death and the marriage, renders it exceffive.

That it should come to this!

But two months dead! nay, not fo much; not two:
So excellent a king, that was, to this,

Hyperion to a fatyr! So loving to my mother,
That he might not let e'en the winds of heaven
Vifit her face too roughly.

The emotion grows ftill more vehement, and overflows the mind with a tide of correfponding images.

Heaven and earth!

Muft I remember? Why, he would hang on him,
As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month

Obferve too, that Hamlet's indignation is augmented gradually, by admiration of his father, So excellent a king;' by abhorrence of Claudius, That was to this, G • Hype

Hyperion to a Satyr;' and, finally, by

a ftinging reflection on the Queen's inconftancy:

Why, fhe would hang on him,

As if increase of appetite had grown

By what it fed on: and yet, within a month

This affects him fo feverely, that he ftrives to obliterate the idea:

Let me not think on't

By this effort he lofes fight, for a moment, of the particular circumstances that gave him pain. The impreffion, however, is not entirely effaced; and he expresses it by a general reflection.

Frailty, thy name is woman!

This expreffion is too refined and artificial for a mind strongly agitated: Yet, it agrees entirely with juft fuch a degree of emotion and penfiveness as disposes us to moralize. Confidered as the language of a man violently affected, it is impro

per:

per: Confidered in relation to what goes before and follows after, it appears perfectly natural. Hamlet's laboured composure is imperfect; it is exceedingly tranfient; and he relapfes into deeper anguish. Though he turned afide from a painful idea, he was unable to remove the impreffion, or vary in any confiderable degree his ftate of mind: The impreffion remained, and restored the idea in its fulleft vigour.

A little month; or ere thofe fhoes were old, With which the follow'd my poor father's body, Like Niobe, all tears-Why, fhe, even she

O heaven! a beast, that wants difcourfe of reason, Would have mourn'd longer-married with my uncle, My father's brother; but no more like my father Than I to Hercules.

It is also obfervable, that, in confequence of the increafing violence of his emotion, the time fo dexterously diminished from two months, to a little month, and to even lefs than a little month, is rendered

G 2